Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust

by Russell O Redman

  Marin had been watching with increasing agitation. “You damned agents, I will have to bury the lot of you in the recycler.” She moved to the other end of the room and studiously ignored us.

  Evgenia was pale as a sheet. “Katerina, I cannot do that. I am terrified of confrontation. It makes me sick just thinking about it.”

  She was about to burst into tears again. Katerina recognized the approaching storm, swept over and wrapped her arms around Evgenia. “Eve, Love, hush. It is OK. It will be much easier than you think. Stick with me for the first few and I will show you.”

  Evgenia practically melted and burst into a full gusher of tears. She slowly, hesitantly, returned the embrace. She finally stammered out, “You… you are not mad at me? Kat, I am sorry for last night...”

  “Eve, Love, never apologize for last night. You are the only good thing that has happened since we arrived. I should apologize to you for getting cross when he would not let up. He even tried to dump me off on other people, which was even worse. I was angry at that jerk over there, not at you. I am still angry with him, because he has been making you cry. Brian, you had better be prepared to do some major penance. You have a lot to make up for.

  “Although, after what I saw this morning, I might forgive even him. His attack was nothing compared to what the Martians did to Morris, Molongo and Wang. Thank goodness, I did not have to go there, but apparently the ministers also had a serious gang rumble with numerous casualties. Brian was merely sophomoric and offensive. What say we kiss and make up, and both blame Brian for being a rude and naughty boy.”

  “He said you would say that. I did not believe him.” And Evgenia’s tears got worse again, shaking off her face and blowing around the room. Leilani and Toyami closed in around her, calming her and drying her tears. Katerina kept kissing her face, lightly and soothingly.

  Watching Evgenia cry, I began to feel the real horror of what I had done. I had been in denial all morning and much of the afternoon. That had not been team building. It had not been consensual play amongst the crew. It had not been a dirty movie, nor a peek through someone’s bedroom window. I had forced sex upon them. I was the first man in a hundred thousand years to commit a completely new form of rape.

  A wave of self-loathing filled me and I wanted to run and hide. I felt totally exposed, like a chicken in the desert with hawks circling overhead and coyotes on every side. Like an agent running for his life at night across the Martian desert, hot as a bonfire on the frigid sand. Like a man trapped in a broken ship, barely in orbit as the rebel fighters closed in from above. I was trapped in this barren room that I was forbidden to leave. I longed for what had previously been one of my routine nightmares, the sand dunes of Mars where I had to bury myself every night while I was on the run to avoid capture.

  I did not know which part of me felt the most shame, although with a sickening lurch I realized that the Ghost felt none, felt instead that the enemy was upon us and time was desperately short. I/he saw the contempt in everyone’s eyes and decided that the grouping had succeeded. They were drawing together and away from me, which was necessary for the Mission to succeed. Even Toyami had finally joined with Katerina, Evgenia and Leilani, if only to oppose me. And then I knew I had committed a rape calculated to force my team into obedience, and I felt another even deeper wave of shame and fear.

  After Evgenia had calmed down, Sergei joined her and Katerina. I heard them talking as though they were far away. He said he thought he understood what Katerina had meant, but felt they needed to walk through it a few times. The three of them huddled, discussing how to approach angry, demented people without being confrontational.

  We all knew that if the rage was real, there would be no safe way to make that approach. It would be necessary first to subdue them and only afterwards try to reason with them. People under an emoji attack would be different. They would be relieved that we had stopped the attack, and would thank us for taking the risk. It was only necessary to get close to them without getting hurt. I could see in a disconnected way that Evgenia was gaining confidence as they talked through a set of scenarios and refined their approach.

  I startled when Leilani put her hand on my back. I had begun to curl into a ball, but straightened up at her touch. She spoke through the comm unit using the encrypted channel.

  “It happened again, didn’t it? Like yesterday at the Soiree. I saw it this morning when Morris told you we were at war. I saw it just now. Like you became someone completely different. Who am I talking to now?”

  I felt like someone was screaming in my head, but slowly I calmed myself, thought odd thoughts about history and art to distract myself, and finally was able to reply, “You saw the Ghost. And now the Cripple is trying to speak. Last night the Ghost and the Cap formed the groups. The Kid suggested dream games. The Cap, the Spacer and the Student selected the emojis to send. But only the Ghost has the plan, knows the Mission, why he wanted it to happen.”

  Toyami and Marin joined us. They were probably both monitoring me, but Toyami voiced what must have been a general concern. “What is going on in there? Your adrenaline is surging, neurotransmitters, hormones, the works. I thought at first it was well-earned shame, but this is craziness of a different order. It is like ten different people are having a fight inside your head. Damn, I wish I could write this up, but I am still not sure what I would even write about. You are one weird, perverted case.”

  Marin said, “There may be some crosstalk. Agent Douglas, when I inserted your new monitor and comm unit, I had to leave the original in place. It did not seem to do much more than monitor your vital functions and keep track of external bugs, but it has been there so long that it is now deeply enmeshed in your brain. Maybe it was installed that way, from the depth of the mesh, although why that would be needed for such basic functions is beyond me. I could not remove it without killing you, so when I inserted the new monitor I offset the neural mesh. That should have given enough separation for them to function independently.

  “I am still wondering why such an expensive and sophisticated device had been dedicated to medical monitoring. I activated the toxin clearing functions and mood stabilization in the old monitor, as well as filling the reservoirs with the standard meds, with the idea that you would have twice the endurance that the new comm alone could manage, but that might have been a mistake. If the old monitor is now actively controlling some part of your brain, the two devices might be fighting each other, and that might explain these strange seizures you have been having.

  “Do you know what the old monitor was really doing? We may have to make some adjustments to the new one.”

  I knew the old monitor had been very active, but toxin clearing and mood stabilization had never been part of it. The psychs who installed it were wizards in their craft. It watched my thoughts. It prevented me from killing myself, but that was mostly to preserve their asset. It prevented me from being a whole person, forcing me to think like one of my earlier selves. It prevented me from speaking about what had happened. Most importantly, it prevented me from completing my Mission. They could not have known it, but this war was happening because I had not been able to finish my job.

  The old monitor was probably booby-trapped. I could not warn her. I could think it, but I could not say it. I had in the past tried singing, drawing, painting, even dancing out my thoughts, but I lost motor control the moment the monitor recognized an attempt at forbidden communication.

  Yet, I had just told Leilani about the Ghost, had told both her and Sergei about my menagerie of former selves at the Soiree. A chorus of eurekas echoed through my head. The Censor, my old monitor, could not tell the difference between subvocalization and passive thought. Bastard, I thought to myself, it has taken ten years and a new war, but I have found a way to speak past you.

  Toyami slapped my face lightly. “What is happening?” she demanded, staring straight into my eyes.

  I spoke to my cluster of concerned women. “Thank you, Doctor Marin. Th
at explains much. Never try to remove the old comm unit. It would probably kill you, and would certainly kill me. I suspect the only people who know what that monitor does are the psychs who originally installed it. I suspect they intended to remove it or upgrade its functions in a year or two, after I had stabilized, but I have never seen any of them since then. It would probably not be safe to try to find them and I am not even sure if they are alive.”

  The screaming had started in my head again. I thought about spring flowers and Paris at night. I thought about a quiet cafe on the left bank and a moonlit glass of wine with a certain beautiful woman who wrapped her arms around me. The screaming faded.

  But the arms did not. They were real, and that certain beautiful woman was still beside me stroking my face. She spoke quietly to Marin and Toyami.

  “It is not just crosstalk between monitors. He used to have this kind of seizure regularly when we first started working together. For weeks, he would be the hardest working, most insightful and compassionate man I ever met. He could talk even the most determined criminals into confession, knew when to be the Bad Cop, all hard-ass and cruel, then would switch unexpectedly to draw out a moment of human connection that broke their resistance. He was wise, and brilliant, and funny, and then suddenly he would curl up into the fetal position, crying and screaming. After a while, I learned that it was usually triggered by a crisis that made him want to tell me a critical fact that he could not talk about.

  “CI never took him seriously. He was just a high-maintenance asset that MI and ExA had dumped on them for political reasons. The first four years, they gave him a series of idiots for supervisors, who tried to force him to speak by shouting at him. He would go catatonic like this, then burst into a rage, shouting back and arguing around the issue without ever coming to the point. Even then, he solved more cases than most other agents. I think I may have been the first supervisor who read the full set of briefing notes and medical assessments in his file, not just the executive summaries. They recommended quiet meditation and gentle contact to help him settle down. It is a pity they do not allow dogs and cats up here. I think a purring kitten in his lap, or a puppy licking his face, would be the best therapy he could hope for.

  “By the way, you will not find those files anywhere in the system any more, not even in the set Morris collected for us. I have personal copies in my office, but I would not dare to pass them through the MI comm these days. If we ever get back there, I will try to make you some copies.

  “In the quiet times, we used to talk of a future where we could live in a small house up-slope on the Big Island in Hawaii, with two dogs, three cats and a yard full of children, our two and all the neighbour’s kids. But with the work and the strangeness of our lives, we never had a chance to make it happen. Please, Doctor Marin, Doctor Toyami, help me get him back. I want my old Brian back, safe and whole.”

  The call came for the squads to form up. Katerina, Sergei and Evgenia gathered with their marines in the suddenly crowded hallway. I rallied enough to see them off, cheering and calling for them to take care, but inwardly burning with my shame and betrayal. Then they disappeared around the corner, heading to the transports, such a tiny band of heroes to face the rage of the Imperium.

  2357-03-05 08:00

  Banshees

  By the time they reached ESDENG, Haliru had improved the comm signal to allow a low bandwidth video feed, as well as our audio transmissions. We watched the platoon as they unloaded from the transport, formed into teams, and conferred with the marines and station personnel who guarded the docks. We were reassured when officers from the Public Safety Office joined each group to provide guidance. Leilani’s instructions had been good, but she and I knew the earth stations like the backs of our hands. I doubted that any of the marines had experience moving through the byways of the stations, and our three Banshees certainly did not.

  Leilani pointed out Sergei, recognizable from his silver and gold mask. For this job, we needed to be non-threatening, so beauty had guided our choices. Sergei had chosen an image of Charlemagne, not the powerfully built man with a bull neck, mustache and prominent nose shown on contemporary coins, but the glamorous image from the Bust of Charlemagne Reliquary in the Aachen Cathedral. Katerina had chosen the image of Wei Anan, the most beloved Chinese actress of the previous century, so perfect that she had resembled a traditional Chinese stage mask with egg-white skin, black eyebrows and blood red lips. Evgenia had decided on an elven face, pale blue and ethereal.

  They headed through the airlock and we lost sight of them. Leilani started to fiddle with the interface on the wall monitor, muttering “The system is not being cooperative, but I think I am connected to the security cameras on Level 195 beside the Tokyo Drop. It will be degraded by the low quality of our connection. There we go, and just in time. They are just coming off Elevator 20.

  “Crap! I was afraid she would do something like that!”

  I was suddenly able to focus. My shame was set aside. I would have to deal with it later, but right now my team was in trouble. “What? I missed it.”

  “Sergei headed left as he exited the elevator, like I told him, towards the nearest service corridor. Katerina and Evgenia turned right. Surely, they are not going up Emeishan Thoroughfare? But, damn, I bet they are. Katerina wants a more theatrical entrance and will warn everyone that they are coming.”

  “Teams, report,” I called.

  Sergei reported back, “I am heading for the service corridor following the original plan. Katerina and Evgenia felt a need for some practice with real people under emoji attack, so they will try to help a few of them before entering the service corridors. They will tell us which approach seems to work best. I want to reach the DG’s office by surprise while everyone is distracted by Katerina and Evgenia. The DG’s office is the only place we have actual reports of violence, so the extra stealth seems required. Ah, I see that they have found their first victim. Sorry, I am about to enter the corridor and need to be quiet until we reach the target.”

  Katerina reported next, “I have saved my first victim. I just cupped her cheeks in my hands, turned off her comm unit and gave her our message. The poor woman almost collapsed with relief, and would have hugged me except the marines would not let her. Eve has gone ahead where some poor man is lying beside the road, twitching.”

  Evgenia reported, “A harder case, but still easy and much less traumatic than I had feared. The man’s comm unit was on and hammering him, but he seems to have tried to drown out the attack with some form of sedative, almost enough to paralyze himself. I do not think he understood anything I said, but I turned off his comm unit and he has not turned it on again. Our Public Safety officer called StaSec, who have agreed to take him to the nearest medical facility.

  “Kat, there is a large crowd at the intersection ahead. That might be a more challenging test.”

  Then there was silence. “People, talk to me!” But I guess everyone was too busy because no one answered for several minutes. Then I got a quick report from one of the squad commanders.

  “Sir, this is amazing to watch! Most of the crowd is just milling around, watching the few who are clearly demented. The Angels go up to them, take their hands or hold their faces, and bless them. The poor blighters stagger away weeping with relief and joy. I know that sounds superstitious, and I understand the emoji attacks, but that is what it looks like. We are about to move forward again. I will report again later.”

  Then I got a call from Morris. “What are your Banshees doing? I thought they were supposed to be spooks, hiding in the shadows. Instead, they are all over the news channels. Look at Channel 2366.”

  We popped the channel up on a wall. The image was just a short clip, but it showed two cowled figures with masks and Council logos, escorted by marines in white armour, moving through the crowd. They stopped at each centre of commotion and calmed the struggling victims. It seemed the video was provided by a local citizen who had uploaded the clip, along with some loud exc
lamations about not believing what she was seeing. She interpreted the entire event as demonic possession, healed by a blessing from the Angels.

  We brought up a selection of channels that handled space-related issues as well as some of the tabloid channels. They were all showing the same clip, until one picked up a live feed from a local reporter on the Deng, who was chasing the marines up the street demanding to know what was happening. The marines and their two Banshees slipped through the next intersection and were gone, but by then the crowd was becoming aware of something extraordinary in the street and more images and videos began popping up.

  One particularly bouncy video seemed to come from a camera in the hands of a small boy riding on his mother’s shoulders. The child’s voice asked, “What is the angel doing, Mommy?” His mother answered, “Hush, just listen.” And faintly I could hear Katerina starting her spiel, “Beloved, be at peace. The Council brings you warning and healing...” Then the crowd carried them away and the audio became too noisy.

  In another, I could see Evgenia holding the arms of a man who was trying to strike her. I could faintly hear, “Dear friend, be free...” One of her marines caught the man from behind and held him until he suddenly went limp. He gave a few words of thanks, which I could not hear over the exclamations of the crowd. Evgenia brushed his face gently before turning away to the next victim.

  Still farther along, a large doorway was closed, with a crowd of people pressing against a nearby window, calling for help. As Katerina swept by with her marines, the door swung open and the people poured into the street, following the Banshees and their marines in a rapidly growing stream.